Legal Writing for Legal Reading!

Archive for the month “December, 2017”

My firm, the Law Office of Faye Riva Cohen, P.C., issues a newsletter at the beginning of each quarter, and, accordingly, we sent one out on December 20, 2017. Our quarterly newsletter updates and informs our readers as to what articles we have published, what seminars we have led, what awards we have received, and what is going on with any other happening at our Firm.

If you wish to read our quarterly newsletter, you can do so here. Thanks and be on the look out for our next newsletter in the beginning of March 2018!

Across the UK, ‘sex education’ has been transformed and disfigured. TV programmes, aimed at children as young as three, promote ‘gender fluidity’, as an enabler of thoughtfulness and individuality.

At the same time, Ministers have denied worried parents the right to withdraw their children from primary school classes. Meanwhile, ‘outside educators’ teach children about sex positions, ‘satisfying’ pornography consumption and how to masturbate. Concerns regarding STI’s and Promiscuity, are derided as ‘old-fashioned’.

Independent religious schools are under intense scrutiny. Dame Louise Casey, a senior government advisor, recently insisted that it is now: ‘Not Ok for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage’.

Ofsted, the body responsible for school-assessment, has been wildly politicised. In 2013, Prior to the redefinition of marriage, Ofsted visited Vishnitz Jewish Girls School. They passed the school with flying colours. In fact, they went out of their way to highlight the committed and attentive approach to student welfare and development. Four years later, Ofsted returned. This time, they failed the school on one issue alone. While again, noting that students were ‘confident in thinking for themselves‘, their report, pointed to the inadequate promotion of homosexuality and gender reassignment. As such, it was failing to ensure: ‘a full understanding of fundamental British values’. It is one of an initial seven faith schools that face closure.

But those men and women who ought to have spoken out against this madness, and who ought to be speaking out now, to save what’s left, lack all conviction. Sergeant:

I mentioned that I was writing this article to a good friend in the Conservative Party, back at home. He expressed his genuine concern. Had I not considered the consequences? Did I not realise that what I said in Australia could be found when I returned to the UK? ‘LGBT progress is an unstoppable tide’. He assured me, that it was ok for me to ‘privately’ believe that marriage was between one man and one woman. He even privately agreed, that the stuff being taught in primary schools was too much.

But to say it out loud? To actually have it in print? It would blight my career and my personal relationships.

Good God. How much more important the institution of marriage and freedom of thought, religion and speech. How much more important the future of our children, than any naïve career ambitions I might harbour.

I urge every Aussie to examine the evidence, analysis the results and be clear about what you’re voting for. If it was solely marriage, it would worth preserving.

It’s infinitely more.

Read the whole thing. This is a clear manifestation of the Law of Merited Impossibility (“It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.”) It is now perfectly clear that those American activists and allies who said that changing marriage law would not be a big deal, and would only mean allowing same-sex couples to marry, were lying — either by intention, or by naively assuming that the juggernaut would stop right there and go no further. A friend of mine told me a couple of weeks ago that two second graders in his kid’s school are “transitioning,” and that his high school daughter came home from school to inform her parents that believing in “the gender binary” is tantamount to racial hatred.

As the SOGI phenomenon achieves cultural hegemony, orthodox Christians are going to be marginalized and scapegoated more and more. If you are a pastor or some kind of church leader, and you aren’t mobilizing your congregation to understand the times and get active to resist this, what is wrong with you? If you are a social or religious conservative who thinks somehow that this is going to pass you by, and leave your kids and your church and your kids’ school alone, so you don’t have to worry about it, well, what is wrong with you?

We have to fight in politics, we have to fight in the courts, but none of those battles will be worth winning if we haven’t fought in schools, churches, families, and elsewhere in the culture to defend our convictions. And note well, it cannot simply be a matter of saying what we are against; it must also, and even more strongly, be a matter of saying what we are for — and then doing what we must to live those things out, as well as to build the institutions, networks, and cells within which to build resistance.

Here are my latest uploads to YesSource, my Yes rarities youtube page (about which you can read here). This post is another addition to my series of Yes music posts and a collection of all my Yes-related posts is here. Yes, of course, is a, if not the, premier progressive rock band, and I am an enormous fan of it.

Over the course of my career, I have written extensively on a wide variety of unemployment compensation law issues and legal principles. These writings have been published in The Legal Intelligencer, Upon Further Review, and The Pennsylvania Family Lawyer as well as posted onto my blog. I have collected these articles and blog posts and have listed them below. Thanks for reading!

Here are my latest uploads to YesSource, my Yes rarities youtube page (about which you can read here). This post is another addition to my series of Yes music posts and a collection of all my Yes-related posts is here. Yes, of course, is a, if not the, premier progressive rock band, and I am an enormous fan of it.

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s first foray into the Star Wars universe is an auspicious one, full of dazzlingly ambitious filmmaking and beautifully bold narrative twists and turns. While not without some minor flaws, this is a triumphant entry in the saga.

While internet scuttlebutt had us thinking the movie would open precisely where J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens left us (with Rey offering up Luke’s lightsaber), it turns out that every word they said was wrong. Johnson instead plunges us headlong into a brilliantly dizzying escape attempt by the Resistance which spirals into a thrilling battle sequence with the First Order that would be extraordinary if it was the Act III finale… here it’s the intro, which lets you know just how much of a thrill-ride this movie is going to be (a huge thrill ride, to be clear). It also charts a clear trajectory for Johnson’s take on the story…

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces heard oral arguments in United States v. Sterling. In the case, the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a court martial conviction of a marine corps member for disobeying a lawful order to remove signs containing Biblical verses that she had taped up around her desk. (See prior posting.) Stars and Stripes summarizes some of yesterday’s argument:

Keller [representing the government] argued the Sterling was not punished for putting up religious signs, but rather for defying orders….

He also argued because Sterling never sought a religious accommodation and only raised the religious protections issue later, there was no argument that her religious freedoms were “substantially burdened” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Clement [representing Lance Cpl. Monifa Sterling] rebutted that because she invoked religious freedom later doesn’t mean that it’s not a fair consideration.

Here are my latest uploads to YesSource, my Yes rarities youtube page (about which you can read here). This post is another addition to my series of Yes music posts and a collection of all my Yes-related posts is here. Yes, of course, is a, if not the, premier progressive rock band, and I am an enormous fan of it.

The idea that typical Christmas traditions – like Christmas Trees, Santa Claus, or even its date – all somehow derive from paganism is so common that it has become almost a truism. The pagan source is either described as something the Christian Church coopted and Christianized or merely as something that has survived as a historical or cultural accident despite the influence of the Church in Western Civilization.

As it turns out, the assumption that Christmas traditions are just pagan holdovers may, indeed, not be based on reality or historical facts but, rather, on unquestioned presumptions – a “conventional wisdom” if you will – based merely on the similarity between the traditions.

It appears, for one reason or another, scholars have recently taken another look at the origin of Christmas traditions, and their findings have revealed that the conventional wisdom about their origin appears to be mistaken.

Instead of rehearsing the facts and arguments myself, I would suggest checking out this article (see here (“Yes, Christ was Really Born on December 25: Here’s a Defense of the Traditional Date of Christmas” by Dr. Taylor Marshall on his website)) and this article (see here (“Calculating Christmas” by William J. Tighe on Touchstone)).

In addition to the above articles, I highly suggest watching this video:

This additional video is primarily addressed to Christians who object to Christmas trees on biblical grounds:

As it turns out, a great article by Daniel Lattier on this subject was recently published in Intellectual Takeout and can be found here and below:

It’s generally accepted that early Christians adopted December 25th as the day of Christ’s birth to co-opt the pagan celebration of the winter solstice. Some believe this fact undermines Christianity.

Based on his extensive research, Tighe argues that the December 25th date “arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.” He also goes so far as to claim that the December 25th pagan feast of the “’Birth of the Unconquered Sun’… was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance of Roman Christians.”

Tighe explains…

In the Jewish tradition at the time of Christ, there was a belief in what they called the “integral age”—that the prophets had died on the same days of their conception or birth. Early Christians spent much energy on determining the exact date of Christ’s death. Using historical sources, Christians in the first or second century settled on March 25th as the date of his crucifixion. Soon after, March 25th became the accepted date of Christ’s conception, as well.

Add nine months—the standard term of a pregnancy—to March 25th, and Christians came up with December 25th as the date of Christ’s birth.

It is unknown exactly when Christians began formally celebrating December25th as a feast. What is known, however, is that the date of December 25th“had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time (Roman emperor from 270-275), nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.” According to Tighe, Aurelian intended the new feast “to be a symbol of the hoped-for ‘rebirth,’ or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire…. [and] if it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.”

As Tighe points out, the now-popular idea that Christians co-opted the pagan feast originates with Paul Ernst Jablonski (1693-1757), who opposed various supposed “paganizations” of Christianity.

Of course, to Christians, it really doesn’t matter that much whether or not they co-opted December 25th from the pagans, or vice versa. The Christian faith doesn’t stand or fall on that detail. But it’s nevertheless valuable for all of us to give closer scrutiny to shibboleths—such as that of the pagan origins of Christmas—which are continually repeated without being examined.

Here are my latest uploads to YesSource, my Yes rarities youtube page (about which you can read here). This post is another addition to my series of Yes music posts and a collection of all my Yes-related posts is here. Yes, of course, is a, if not the, premier progressive rock band, and I am an enormous fan of it.